


The Patron Saint of Hunting

by HicSuntDracones



Series: 15x20 Whomst? [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 'Cause this is how I see it ending, 15x20 sucked ass, Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Dean Winchester, Castiel is Saved from the Empty (Supernatural), F/M, Fuck Canon, Gen, Hunter Lore, I can't believe I'm writing SPN fic at this point in my life but here I am, M/M, No i don't know how to tag what about it, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Urban Legend Castiel, Urban Legend Dean Winchester, Who says a story has to end?, extremely limited editing, potentially, so it didn't happen, urban legend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HicSuntDracones/pseuds/HicSuntDracones
Summary: He’s the Patron Saint of Hunters, and most prayers to him include a swear or two. The few altars at hunter’s bars are covered with cheap jewelry and amulets,  a slice of pie set to the side of the counter. In the middle of nowhere you might see a monster of a car parked on the side of the road, a figure or two lying on top and soaking in the sun. They’re gone once you blink. It’s a good legend, if one that even hunters don’t understand completely.Or, what happens to Dean when the Winchester Gospels are over? I can't see him settling down completely, but I don't see him fading away either. I see him becoming a legend instead, a part of hunter lore.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: 15x20 Whomst? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021278
Comments: 26
Kudos: 140





	The Patron Saint of Hunting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anactoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Rough](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658319) by [anactoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria). 



> This is loosely inspired by 'The Rough' by anactoria, because it addressed something that was bugging me; Dean being able to settle down. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, but I'm not saying he'd be able to. They've all been through too much to settle down completely, and I think becoming an urban legend suits my babe of bad decisions much better than a white-picket fence. Let him have a place to rest his head sometimes, but then let him get back up, let him keep helping, let his story never die. He doesn't have to end bloody, he doesn't have to end at all.

If you're a hunter in the Western Hemisphere, you know the story. The legend, more like it. A hunter who never dies, who died fifty years ago, who may never have been alive at all, at least not in the human way. 

A few people just call him the Hunter. Say he’s someone who’s damn good at his job and just never bothers to stick around when it’s done. You’ll roll up to a town where half a dozen have died, only to find out that he was there first and clean up’s done too. He never checks into the network, can’t be tracked through ammo purchases, and drives a car almost a century old. 

Some people try to connect him to the Winchester Gospels. Say he’s one of the brothers that saved the world and damned it and saved it again. You’re not sure you believe that old hunter’s tale, but you can’t shake the time you were driving through Kansas late at night and the radio started blaring classic rock. Nothing after 1993 until Lebanon was in the rear-view mirror. There aren’t many hunters left from the generation that spawned the Gospels, so it’s hard to say whether they’re telling the truth or not. Still, Carry On Wayward Son has become something of a hymn, and the Gospel’s aren’t a half bad cautionary tale.

Most call him the Patron Saint of Hunting. Say he was born of everything a hunter prayed for, and that he’ll be around as long as there’s still one more person fighting the good fight. It’s hard to keep faith as a hunter, but you know he’s out there cause sometimes you’ll find something drawn in the grass or carved into a wall, and damn if it doesn’t turn out to be just the thing you need, the connection you weren’t making, the sigil that saves your life a few hours later. 

He’s there when you’re making a last stand, buying you a few precious seconds to get away. He’s there when you need one perfect shot to bring down the monster of the week. He’s there as you swear while loading your rock salt, and he’s there when there’s one motel room left in the whole damn town you just risked your life to save.

He’s there when a job’s too big, and no prayer is too small. Hunters never want big things anyway; all you ask for is a warm dinner, to win at pool, and that the salt n’ burn goes smoothly. And he provides. A tip there, a light left on here, an extra case of bullets or a spare knife left somewhere you’ll find it.

Everyone’s seen him, just never up close. It’s practically a rite of passage to see your first glimpse of a leather jacket out of the corner of your eye, to hear the bang of a shotgun from the other end of a shadowed alley, to find tire tracks leading to nowhere. Sometimes it’s the unmistakable wounds left by an angel blade, or burned out eye sockets that would be terrifying if he wasn’t on your side. 

Almost no one digs into it. Most lore about him is common knowledge or common sense, and no one wants to risk angering whatever he is and lose his protection. Because you can lose his protection. People who hunt for the blood of it, murderers who get too much joy out of it, people who are quickly becoming the monsters they claim to hate. People like that are usually found in ways that have caused more than a few green hunters to vomit their guts out. 

He’s the Patron Saint of Hunters, and most prayers to him include a swear or two. The few altars at hunter’s bars are covered with cheap jewelry and amulets, a slice of pie set to the side of the counter. In the middle of nowhere you might see a monster of a car parked on the side of the road, a figure or two lying on top and soaking in the sun. They’re gone once you blink. It’s a good legend, if one that even hunters don’t understand completely. But really, no hunter’s gonna say no to a hard job being made a little easier. Who cares very much about the source? 

  
  


````````

His name is Dean Winchester, and he might be on your side. Then again, he might not, because he’d laugh in your face if you deigned to call him holy in any way. His brother used to call him a jerk, and he still is, even after being more than a little removed from human after all these years.

He’s not sure what he is anymore. All he knows at this point in his existence-yeah, even he’s not sure if he’s still alive at this point-is that: 1)he loves his family, 2)he loves his husband, and 3)constant peace and quiet never really sat well with him. The never-ending road got weary after a while, yeah, but sitting at home all day just didn’t suit the person he’d become. Maybe in another life he could have settled down all the way, but in this one...all he really needed was a place to come back to and nothing that was too much more than he could handle. 

It started with the Empty. After the whole ‘defeated God’ thing, the next move was simple: get the angel back. Problem being, nothing was supposed to leave the Empty once it got sucked in. Cas was the only person/angel/stubborn bastard that had ever gotten out, and that was because of the aforementioned stubborn bastardness plus the fact that he was really fucking annoying when he wanted to be. Even then, he was not supposed to escape twice. Enter Dean, who was not afraid of utilizing the nepotism associated with being God’s dad to break open a portal to the primordial darkness. The rescue mission itself went pretty well; Dean jumped in head first like an idiot, cursed out the Empty like an idiot, and managed to find and wake up Cas like someone who was actually frighteningly competent. It was exiting the Empty that turned out to be the issue; turns out when you try to leave another dimension without the permission of the eldritch entity that rules it, said eldritch entity can really fuck you over. 

Sam held open the portal while Dean dragged himself and Cas out, but something got left behind. To this day, none of them are quite sure what it is. Sam’s of the opinion that it’s some part of their being that is only comprehensible in the dimension of the Empty, and he and Cas got real nerdy about that. Dean doesn’t care too much, he’s alive and he’s got a soul and that’s what matters. It’s not clear until much later that he looks exactly the same as he did when he jumped through that portal. Cas was affected too, not in the same way, but he’s a part angel and part human and not quite either. 

They didn’t find this out until later, of course. At first, everyone was looking forward to some domesticity. Eileen was the only one hunting at that point, and very much enjoying the fact that there were three men cooking and cleaning for her when she got home. She wasn’t ready to rest yet. Turns out, neither was Dean. He kept sneaking out with Eileen until she finally put her foot down and told him to find his own cases. 

That’s when things started getting a little weird. Dean would go out, handle a case, and be ready to come home when he’d suddenly get the gut feeling to keep going, just a few towns over. Sure enough, there’d be a case there that no one had called in yet. Freaky, yeah, but it could have been intuition. 

Cas was the one to point out the next change. When he wasn’t helping Jack make some much needed adjustments to Heaven, or training the new angels, he’d go on cases with Dean. Which is how he realized that Dean wasn’t sleeping. He just kept driving to the next town and the next and the next, apparently without realizing that he hadn’t slept in a week. When they were back at the bunker, both of them slept normally, crankiness, caffeine addictions and all. But when they went out? Dean never rested, and didn’t appear to need to. 

It went on like that for years. Life changed, as it always did. Eileen and Sam took over running the bunker; Sam handling the library and burner phones while Eileen managed the nearby cases and rebuilding their connection to the international network. They both got part time jobs eventually, raised a few kids and stayed closer to home, but never completely quit. At the same time, Dean faded in and out of bunker life. If you asked anyone, they’d always say they’d just seen him, and the angel too. Which would be true, because they moved around a lot but always ended up back at the bunker. There were quiet days and research days and hunting days, and every so often someone would notice that something was just a little bit off with Dean. (It was harder to tell with Cas, who’d always lived a little to the left of human understanding). 

The Impala didn’t need to be fueled. Dean’s ‘intuition’ became something more than a good gut feeling. Little coincidences made life easier for hunters in town when they rolled up. Sometimes Cas could zap them in and out of existence again. They never seemed to run out of bullets. 

\-------------

The Winchesters had always been infamous. But as years rolled by and Dean Winchester looked the same as he did a decade, three decades ago? That turned into a legend. He was always around. There were people who had known him years ago and people who had talked to him yesterday, and people who had been taking a rest at the Lebanon bunker only to find two not-quite-there men napping quietly in a long-unused room. 

And it went on. Eventually, more than a few hunters grew up believing that the Winchesters were just a good story, something to scare the greenies with and a lesson on making demon deals. The association with Kansas-the state and the band-wore thin, leaving those who believed in the Saint to think that he’d always been there. But the best things I know of are the things that started out human and defied humanity in the strangest way: they didn’t end. 

He’s still out there, driving that monstrosity of a car and getting teased by an ex-angel ‘cause now he’s the one getting prayed to. He’s doing what he loves with who he loves, and people choose to believe in it. Who knows how this will end, or if it will ever end at all. 

He’s the Patron Saint of Hunters, and he’s carrying on. 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it, this is my second SPN fic inside of three days, such is the power of an ending that breaks you inside and the spite wielded by bisexual eldest children when they're pissed. (Yes i project onto Dean far too much what about it)
> 
> "we've only got one chance to put things at an end / and cross the patron saint of switchblade fights"
> 
> Love to all you nerds who scream with me into the void, and as a reminder:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEg_18R_0L0&list=PLpXKKjLOdpe4siCKeNTUZbAhFSOXnpJcq&index=13  
> play this video playlist in the background to donate to various BLM foundations and bail funds. If you're like me and have no money, this is a good way to help. Fanfic is great, but stay active and stay educated in whatever way you can.


End file.
